These "vendor firms" are a study in how a domestic market pushes back against off-shoring competition, as well as an interesting experiment in modern digital communcation.

I've encountered many problems with them:

1.  Contradictory terms in their service contracts that nobody seems able to fix (the send them out through low level managers who have no authority to modify or negotiate the contract).

2.  Their fixed pricing is too high to compete with $6 in India, but too low to pay a reasonable rate for what they expect of the abstractor, often not paying for county copy costs and asking for 50-year searches for pennies on the dollar.

3.  Many do not understand the distinction between an independent contractor, an employee and ordering a set report product from another business, including the copyright issues that can come with each of those different classifications.

4.  Some of them have taken the same vendor contract and reused it with the company name changed.   The original had spelling and grammar errors, not to mention poorly written terms that are either unenforcable, outside the bounds of good standards and practices for our industry, or simply unintelligible as to their intent.  Some of the provisions put a burden on the abstractor that is harsh;   no payment without a pile of checks with no counter-checks in place for the abstractor's peace of mind.

5.  These contracts create a lowest common denominator for service.  Added bonus materials that I'll put into any report for a client at no added cost in time or money would be omitted from such vendor packages due to the liability in confusion that we've often run into with their sometimes poorly educated staff.  Too much hassle and headache to deal with this sort of drama.

I recommend rejecting these vendor proposals, raising  your rates, pounding the pavement harder and over a wider range of geographic territoriy and product offerings and referring people to other abstractors from SOT when a request falls outside your ability.  It's what we do and we are not bound by weird non-compete, non-disclose terms or nonpaying vendor firms. 

Capitalism is marked by competion, not cooperation.